


Masks & Memories

by autumnknight



Category: Vampire: The Masquerade, World of Darkness (Games)
Genre: Accidental Marriage, Angst, Community: trope_bingo, Ghoul, Longing, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-04
Updated: 2013-02-04
Packaged: 2017-11-28 04:57:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,235
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/670516
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/autumnknight/pseuds/autumnknight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A former ghoul-turned-hunter and Nosferatu conflict over the Hunter's recent marriage to a stranger. Arguments, drama, and angst ensue.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Masks & Memories

Fiona sank into the welcoming depths of her aging tartan blue armchair, a steaming mug of tea slowly warming her cupped hands. The light from the kitchen remained on, partially illuminating the shadowy living room in which she sat. It was partially a gesture of politeness, she supposed, but it was also one of acknowledgement. He didn't like to be seen for what he was. She raised the drink to her mouth and sipped slowly, staring forward. Outside, a quiet rain glazed the concrete with icy bits of sleet. Even in the dim light, she could see where the carpet was crushed and wet from a recent intruder, just beyond the front door. He must have arrived not long ago; possibly even as she was brewing her tea. "Are you going to say hello, Casper? Or is this one of those times where we both pretend you aren't here?" Her query hung in the air: waiting. She continued to wait, drinking the hot tea at sporadic intervals, trying not to think about the delicate band of white gold around her left ring finger and what he might say when he eventually realized. Self-consciously, and fighting a wave of uncertainty, she curled her left hand into a fist and rested it on her lap. Eventually, she became aware of a dark silhouette fading into view directly in front of her, approximately six feet away. Her dark brown eyes adjusted to sharpen his visage and slowly she began to make out the barest hints of his terrible features.

 

"Hello, Hound." His raspy voice grated across her ears, simultaneously unsettling and familiar. She heard it so rarely, these days.

 

"Casper." She greeted him with his favoured alias, as he had offered her own. "What brings you?"

 

"The same as always." He shuffled forward more swiftly than his hunched posture should have permitted. As he came closer, she could make out the horrific scars, pustules, and pock marks that riddled every inch of visible skin. Although she couldn't be sure, in this shadowy setting, her instincts told her that his jaundiced green eyes were staring intently. "Hoping maybe you'll come to your senses someday."

 

Fiona took a long draught of the cooling beverage. "Just like every time. It's been six years; isn't that long enough to admit that's all behind us now?"

 

"Six years isn't so long, in the grand scheme of things."

 

"For you, maybe." She leaned forward and set the cup down on the table, standing up with a sigh. "If that's all you can say, Cas, you should just go. I really will kill you if you keep coming back." From the leather holster on her hip, she drew a thick wooden stake and pointed it at him. The shadows cut harsh lines around her figure, even sharper around the tip of the weapon. "Is that what you want?"

 

He stared at her, either uncomprehendingly or defiantly. A grunt escaped him as he reached up to pull on the lamp cord, flooding the barren living room with light. As she blinked to adjust, he reached out a bony, knotted hand to push the tip of the stake down. "No." He snorted.

 

She didn't lift it again, glancing away from the full impact of his ghastly features. "We found the warrens again, Casper. We'll be hitting them within the week." Fiona admitted bitterly as she re-holstered the stake and ran both of her calloused hands through her short black hair. "I wish you would all just leave so I could stop making myself sick over wondering if we'll catch you this time. I hate worrying about you. I'm so sick of not being able to do my job all the way." When he didn't reply, she felt the long-building oily, cold resentment welling up in her throat. "I'm not your ghoul anymore! I'm not your girlfriend or your friend. I'm a fucking hunter!" Still, he remained silent, just watching her with those all-too-knowing, revolting green eyes. She stomped around the coffee table and struck him upside the head with both fists clenched together, with so much force that a normal man would have immediately crumbled. The Nosferatu's head barely turned, though he did wince and rub at the spot where her blow had landed. She couldn't meet those sickening eyes, so she continued to hit him, driving her sharp knuckles into the most vulnerable sores and fleshy parts of his eternally disfigured body, hoping fervently that somehow it hurt. It didn't take long for her flare of rage to disperse itself in the face of his passive non-resistance. "I hate you and your kind." She hissed.

 

"Fion--" The hunter cut him off with a tightly controlled headbutt directly to his nose - a strike that did cause him to stumble back. When the athletic young woman reared back for another punch, he grabbed both of her hands in his own and squeezed as gently as a creature of his unearthly strength could manage. As expected, she winced. "Fiona!" Casper protested. "Stop."

 

She glared at him.

 

"We were so close," He wheedled, shifting his grip to hold her hands, much like a lover, rather than clenching them as a captor. "It wasn't all the blood bond; you know that. We used to stay up all night, playing with people's security systems like toys, cracking passwords, writing programs to slow each other down ... what was so false about that?" She hung her head, a sheaf of black hair obscuring her face and conflicted thoughts from view. He suddenly seemed to fall silent and she felt her left ring finger being examined between his thumb and forefinger. No. She wasn't ready to tell him about that yet. Fiona lashed out at him wildly, struggling to yank her hands free, kicking fiercely at his shins and stamping on his brittle toes until he released her and allowed her to back away. When their eyes met, he looked appalled. His pallid face was somehow drained even further of colour. "Tell me that's not what I think it is." His dry voice cracked.

 

She scowled, crossing her arms to hide her bruised hands from view. "I can tell you it's not any of your concern."

 

"For how long? When did you... I don't understand. You can't be _married_ ; I would've known." Fiona deeply resented the unspoken admission of this claim. She had always suspected that he had her under surveillance, but this was the first time he had come so close to admitting it.

 

"You don't know half as much as you think you do." The ring felt heavy on her finger, despite its delicate design. "When the team went on assignment to Toronto last week, I... I had some leisure time. We went clubbing a couple times." She looked down at her brown forearms. "It doesn't matter. You don't deserve to know any of this. I don't even know why I'm telling you."

 

"Tell me." He demanded - and then softened it with a quiet, "Please."

 

"We were all really drunk." Unbidden, a soft, fond smile rose to her curved lips as she recalled. "I met this cute Indian girl - Kavi. She's a grad student; civil engineering. She was drunk off her ass, too. We really hit it off and I just couldn't stop laughing. A few drinks later, my friends started joking around, saying things like 'oh, if you like her so much, you should marry her!'" A laugh escaped her without warning and she sat back down on the couch, beginning to twirl the ring on her finger with the same secret sort of smile playing across her features. "So we found a place." She felt the couch cushion sink deeper as Casper took a seat beside her. He appeared shell-shocked; torn between dismay and disbelief. It was difficult to fully read his disfigured face, as it always had been.

 

He ran a dessicated tongue over his cracked lips and then swiped at his mouth with the back of his hand. "Can you still annul it?"

 

"Probably." She answered quietly, watching his head bob up and down in acknowledgement.

 

"That's good. Probably be doing that soon, eh?" The hope in his tone resurrected a vestige of sympathy in her gut for him. With glum resignation, she attempted to crush it before it could take root. The days of kind feelings for her former master were long past. They had to be.

 

"I don't know yet."

 

He scoffed loudly. "Oh, please. Like hunters have social lives, let alone _families._ You know much better than that. I've seen how tight a leash they keep you on. And for what?"

 

"For our own good." _And for the good of all_. The memorized motto waited to be finished verbally. "Some hunters have families. It's not easy, but they're not exactly rare, and it can be done if you find the right person."

 

He jabbed a gnarled finger into her shoulder. "Key words, right there. The right person. You can't seriously believe that you found 'The One' in a fucking Toronto nightclub. You especially can't believe that kind of shit would work out without one or both of you getting your throat torn out in the middle of the night while you're snuggled close together in your nice, warm bed of denial."

 

"I believe in fucking vampires, don't I?" Fiona snarled, slapping his hand away. Despite her carefully cultivated hatred, his words still stung. If he was trying to hurt her for moving on, he was succeeding.  In the back of her turmoiled thoughts, however, one rebelliously morose inkling warned her that he was telling the truth. "Look, I don't know if it'll work out between Kavi and I, but it would sure be nice to have the chance to try! I am tired of only talking to people who see things the same way I do; I am tired of never having a break; and I am tired of being _lonely_. We might have a halfway decent shot at being happy and just because things _might_ not work out doesn't seem like much of an argument against trying!"

 

"But you don't love her." He insisted. "You scarcely know her; you couldn't possibly."

 

"Not yet." She relented. "But that doesn't mean I won't."

 

Their eyes locked. A faint but familiar pressure began to build behind her eyes, and she realized that he was exerting some kind of mental trick against her. As she watched, his features began to mould like modeling clay, reshaping into something far more human. _It's only an illusion_ , Fiona reminded herself. Casper used to pull this trick all the time; he and all the other Nos she had encountered in the past were masters of masking their true natures. Regardless, when the face of a gaunt, sunken-eyed, cinnamon-haired white man in his early forties emerged, she couldn't help but feel that same surge of nostalgia again. She had loved to look at him like this - but it was only an illusion, much as everything else between them had been.

 

"I love you, Hound." Casper confessed. "Even still."

 

In her mind, she imagined herself leaning forward to dissolve into a kiss. In her mind, she remembered curling up against him with a laptop and breaking into someone else's computer together. In her mind, she remembered the waves of unbelievable bliss radiating from where his fangs pierced her neck and the nights they had spent entwined together that way. She even remembered daydreaming about someday spending eternity just like that - but that was before her uncle had rescued her from the blood bond. Invariably, without fail, memories of how devoted she had been to him were accompanied by the memory of the full year of rehab, the ghoul support groups, and the wracking misery and longing and pain of the bond breaking down piece by piece, until she finally woke up one morning and realized it was gone. How much love could she have truly possessed for him in the throes of that kind of emotional slavery? How much could he have loved her, if he was willing to subject her to that kind of control?

 

"Kavi is coming to visit me next week." It felt like another person was speaking through her mouth, dragging the right words from the clutches of the emaciated ghoul inside who still refused to die. The words belonged to the liberated Hunter, but the tears glimmering on her black eyelashes were welling from the vampire-blood addict who constantly threatened to re-emerge. "And if anything happens to her, I swear to God that I will kill you."

 

Casper drew himself up from the sofa, tearing his gaze away from her view so that she wouldn't see his reaction. "I am so sorry for everything, Hound." He stepped away, fists clenching as the illusion of normalcy melted away from the rotted cracks and craters of his marred face. When he coughed, she knew he was also on the verge of tears. "I just wish I could turn back time and make you believe me." He vanished from view and the door to her apartment opened seconds later.

 

"Me too." She whispered as it closed, burying her face in her oaken brown hands. Fiona allowed herself these few moments of pain, even after she rose and took her long-cold mug into the kitchen to begin cleaning her apartment for Kavi's eventual visit.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you very much for reading! I hope you found it enjoyable. I wrote this piece to fill in 'accidental marriage' on my Trope Bingo card, but also to force myself to get over my anxiety about sharing my own fanfiction. After I've written bingo prompts to my heart's content, I hope to present longer stories with proper chapters and development and updates - oh my! These will possibly include more about Fiona and Casper, so if you enjoyed this, please feel free to send along any thoughts, reviews, or questions!


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